Monday, 27 March 2017

Big Data: Answering the questions that don’t yet exist

Data is growing fast, real fast! It’s predicted that
humanity’s accumulated digital universe will be 44 trillion gigabytes by 2020. That’s
a lot of data to crunch considering today only 0.5% of data is ever analysed. Somewhere
in that data we will find the cure for all disease, the ability to conserve our
planet, to generate unlimited free energy, prevent war, and produce enough food
for every person on the planet. Technology will have to help us, Artificial
Intelligence and Machine Learning will guide us to the answers we seek, or
perhaps decide to kill us all.

For now, I think I need to start smaller. I have been
researching “big data” for a long time now, trying to understand what it all
means to Westcoast and what it could mean for our partners. What is big data,
how could we use it, do we even have any? We ship hundreds of thousands of
products each year, have thousands of customers, who in turn have thousands of
customers themselves. We must have big data, right? Well maybe not in the truest sense of the meaning,
but we have lots of data, and we certainly have “big questions”.

The questions we have could historically be answered with
spreadsheets, intuition, a bit of luck, and a sprinkle of entrepreneurial
spirit. But we have reached the limit, as we automate more and more of our
processes we are capturing data faster than ever before. Data that isn’t just
valuable to us, but to our Vendors and Reseller partners. How can we gain
insights from that data and how can we share those insights with partners? How
can we share our success? These are the just some of the many questions that we
will be working to answer, using the technologies that we sell.

We’ve already started the journey, and we look forward to
sharing what we have learned along the way. Big data may sound dull at first,
but scratch the surface and you begin to understand the transformational power
of data. It will push all of us at Westcoast into new ways of thinking, new
capabilities, and new ways of doing business. Right now we’re working on a
project that seeks to find needs in our industry that no one knows exists yet,
and finding ways to solve them, to accelerate change. We will improve
collaboration and engagement for better business and provide all of our customers
with an amazing experience. We are excited, re-energised and we are up for it. So,
stay tuned for more details…